How insane is a single unit of Werebears? According to some math I am doing if you count their third attack they get 30 attacks as a unit. Not counting that attack they still get 12 which is 5 more than the brutal rating Alex gave trolls in the example. Am I missing something here or are they just crazy?
I suspect they are pretty insane. Did you build them with 120 or 60 per unit?
Doing 60 werebears (since regular bears are Large):
Unit Move 2/4/6
Unit Form IF
Unit AC 7
Unit HD 6
Unit HP 24
Unit Attack Throw 5+
# of attacks 6
Unit Morale +2
That excludes the bite attack. If it's included, # of attacks is 10.
The truly insane would be a unit of 60 bronze golems:
Unit Move 4/8/12 (extrapolating from existing table)
Unit Form IF
Unit AC 9
Unit HD 20
Unit HP 80
Unit Attack Throw -3+
# of attacks 28
Unit Morale N/A
It wouldn't be economical in the least to hire this unit (almost 82,000 GP per month!), but it will quite thoroughly trash anything it goes up against. Other than flying monsters, the toughest standard unit is going to be dwarven heavy infantry A or C in defensive posture, and they're only AC 8 with 8 HP, so the golem unit will (on average) hit with 21 attacks in a single round.
Can you go through your math? I have it as this:
(60 creatures) x (3 attacks + 1.75 cleave factor) x (19 Average damage / (40 large creature size factor x 4.5)
Meaning (60)*(4.75)*(19/(40*4.5))
(60)*(4.75)*(19/(180))
(60)*(4.75)*0.1056
285*0.1056
30.096
Minus bite I get 12.
Golems are nice though. Wages only count if you dont own them. Vampire Wizard Lord might have made a few over the years and just decide to break them out once in a while.
Werebears are listed as large so 60 per unit. Wait did I miss read it again? Do they just have three attacks and can deal another 2d8 for a hug if both claws hit? Beacuse I assumed that was the extra damage in the attack table but I noticed it was listed as a bite.
So in theory a werebear could attack and hit for 2d4/2d4/2d8/+2d8?
Two issues I notice (and don’t feel bad because this is possibly the most math-intensive part of all of ACKS!)
The ‘average damage’ is average damage per attack, not average damage per attack sequence, so 6.33~ instead of 19. (See the troll example on page 82 of Battles. I’m not sure if this is spelled out in text anywhere.)
And wereboars, being a 6 HD creature, have a cleave factor of 1.40; it needs to be 6+ (as in, 6+X instead of a flat 6) to make it up to 1.75.
Average damage is the big one, though, that’ll account for the difference.
I totally missed that too, and assumed it was two attacks at 2d4 that, if both hit, led to a 2d8 damage. OK, a werebear unit normally has 10 attacks at 5+. That's mildly nasty.
Why 10?
I calculate it at 9.3 which rounds down to 9.
(60 in a unit, cleave factor 1.4, number of attacks 3, average damage per attack 6.33~, size factor 40)
Because I made a math error and used 6.67 instead of 6.33, which made me think it was 9.8. You're right, it's 9 attacks.
I think that golems are bigger than "large", i imagine them closer to gigants (being 20HD and all that).
that and the cost to build them is truly insane, 60 bronze golems would cost 2.700.000 plus components.
I originally thought they were bigger as well, but page 37 of D@W:B states that they're Large. Bone and Wood golems are Man-Sized, and all other golems are Large.